Only if enough ordinary Americans speak up and demand better from both their employers and their government is the system going to get fixed. But first of all, we have to understand how serious the problem is.

The children of baby boomers should take very seriously the consequences for them of the inadequate funding for them of the baby boomer generation. This is a huge economic problem for the nation, not just for individuals or individual families. Think about it for a minute - if retirees become 20% of our population and their purchasing power falls below what has been normal for retirees in the past, one important engine driving our economy will be diminished.

It is absolutely stunning. You cannot read numbers that communicate what the reality is. That's part of what I'm trying to get across and that's partly why I use video.

I personally make sure that some of my investments are in foreign securities or in international commodity portfolios that are independent of the US dollar. But that's a personal preference. I do not invest in currencies because it's so complicated and so risky. I would not attempt that without excellent professional help.

There is no question that policy makers, corporate leaders, pension consultants, and journalists too have to get out into the real world to at least see the pain of retirement woes before they start to prescribe policies and solutions.

Journalists cover words and delude themselves into thinking they have committed journalism.

The most common mistakes were investing in money market funds by people who were so scared at the prospect of managing their own funds that they picked the most conservative option, and their investments did not keep up with inflation. The second major mistake was being too heavily invested in their own company's stock, and buying when it was high and there was a lot of optimism about the company, and then having to sell it low when the company got in trouble.